METAPHOROLOGISM OF WATER

 

'The clearest thing is water.' (A Catalan saying).

Metaphorologism^[1] of Water^[2]. The difficulty and ‘triviality’ of the subject

Giving serious thought to water is surprisingly problematic.  Case in point:  an amateur play to which I was recently invited served up a university lecturer as an object of ridicule.  Neurotic, bumbling and unable to make himself  understood, he was, tellingly, an expert on water.  The play thus set out to comment on the paradox of gaining wisdom about 'nothing', the paradox of specialising in what is—to all appearances—not a matter for specialisation.  After all, we all consider ourselves experts on the subject of water or, at the very least, know what needs to be known.

 

In short, the play treated water as the very model of a ‘non-theme’, which should not to be confused with an ‘anathema’, since traditional anathemas generally constitute the sort of thing we are particularly keen on nowadays, the subject matter we find most riveting.  Water, instead, seems to present us with an outright non-theme, not a welcome anathema to exploit as the occasion demands.  Since we often forget the ease with which humanity has resorted to murder over water, the very issue of water has become, in the popular mind, as colourless, tasteless and odourless as water the substance is said to be or is supposed to be. Therefore, it must be confessed, we appear to be dealing with a subject that is so basic, so banal, so universally well-known that it can barely stand up as a theme in its own right.  Philosophically speaking, it is a substance that is so lowly, so commonplace, so ubiquitous that it winds up negating itself, its own  substantiality.  Right up until, that is, drought threatens our ability to keep fields green (or, at least, to water golf course greens!).

But let’s turn back to water as non-theme and, very nearly, non-substance.  Defining it or even treating it as a real substance is not at all straightforward.  Surely, the problem that faces us is comparable to the one that must have been suffered by the Austrian writer Robert Musil when, on his long walkabout in search of who contemporary man is, he started the interminable (and unfinished) writing of ‘The Man without Qualities’ (its English title). In Catalan, it is known as ‘The Man without Attributes’ and I agree with José María Valverde that both ‘The Man without Qualities’ and ‘The Man without Properties’ would be better translations for the simple reason that Musil came to signal—as Zygmunt Bauman currently says of contemporary society and culture—that the human being had become liquescent, liquid, insubstantial.  Precisely like that most versatile, changing, commonplace and lowliest of liquids:  water.  That is, water is the liquid that appears to be without qualities, properties or attributes to give it profile, to stick its chest out within the hierarchy of elements. 

Water or waters?

Despite the conference title ‘Waters that Make One Think’, it would seem that water per se does not make one think particularly much.  For this precise reason, the splendid conference-organiser Eduard Cairol astutely makes use of plural, concrete 'waters' instead of the singular, but abstract 'water'.  On the one hand, ‘water’ seemingly lacks the qualities, properties and attributes of a genuine substance.  Its lowliness borders on nihilism.  It does not even appear to accept specific predicates that would embolden us to award it the category of a substantial philosophical theme.  ‘Waters’, on the other hand, calls up a tremendous wealth of concrete examples from across the culture, all well-known and  widely used:  firewater, standing water, troubled waters, deep water, holy water, mineral water, running water, whitewater, stagnant water, rosewater, open water and so forth.

Certainly, such plural ‘waters’ become concrete with adjectives like these.  They bring us nearer to being, to thingness and accident, to the symbols and metaphors that display the great cultural wealth of humanity.  Nonetheless this should not stop us from wondering why it is still so hard to address singular water as a theme. After all, it underlies everything, is common to everything, is its necessary condition.  Why are all these guises of plural waters able to hide water per se? 

Physical symbol of being and nothingness

From a scientific standpoint, it may perhaps be rather a waste of time addressing what seems the most insubstantial of substances, the most liquescent of materials.  This element most lacking in attributes hardly seems worthy of our attention.  As we have seen, though, the challenge of finding a way to speak about it remains, and that may bear more than a hint of the truth in it after all.  But let’s take it step by step, since that was not case at the outset of philosophy.

'In the beginning there was the great universal ocean, infinite waste, perfect silence'

According to the insights of Thales of Miletus, water ought to be considered—at least in terms of the living world—the common substrate that lies behind and sustains everything:  the primary matter.  From a human perspective, there is no life where there is no water, none at all in fact.  It is likely that Thales of Miletus was, in part, echoing traditional cosmogonies.  For example, Homer, in keeping with Orphic tradition, put the water divinities Oceanus and Tethys along with Styx at the beginning of time—in other words, there was water^[4].  In the Iliad (14.200 and 14.301), Oceanus is described as ‘the one from whom the gods are sprung’ and ‘the source of all the gods‘ (14.244), and Tethys is referred to as 'the mother'.  Even more clearly, water plays a key role in the Egyptian cosmogony, always closely linked to the water of the river Nile. It is said that ‘in the beginning there was the great universal ocean, infinite waste, perfect silence‘^[5].  The Babylonian cosmogony was also closely linked to rivers, namely the Tigris and the Euphrates. There it is stated that the Apsu and Tiamat were present in the beginning, representing the oceans of fresh water and seawater, respectively.

In addition, the first rendering of the creation story in the Bible (Gen 1.2b) speaks of Tehom, which was the primeval, turbulent water that encircled and imprisoned the earth.  Although God had already created the heavens and the earth, the earth ‘was without form, and void; darkness was upon the face of the deep [Tehom]. And the Spirit of God moved [instilling order and life] upon the face of the waters.’  Only from that state, then, is light created and so on.  In addition, the Indian sacred text the Rig Veda speaks of an original and ‘unknown fountainhead‘, while the Greek Empedocles based a theory of evolution on the sea, which was the original womb and source of everything.

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^[1] This neologism stems from German philosopher Hans Blumenberg’s work and refers not simply to a fairly specific metaphor, but also to the entire complex of metaphors related to it.

^[2] This paper flows from a lecture called ‘Waters that Make One Think: the Subject of Water in Philosophy’, given on 19th October 2005, in the auditorium of the Continuing Education Institute in Barcelona (132 Balmes).  It was part of the cycle entitled ‘Water and Culture: Symbols, Myths, Rituals’ organised by Pompeu Fabra University and the Joan Maragall Foundation.

^[4] Karl-Heinz Ohlig La evolución de la conciencia religiosa, (Formation of Conscience) Barcelona, Ed. Herder, (2002) 2004: 161.

^[5] Ohlig (2004: 161), citing W. Beltz’s Die Mythen der Ägypter (Myths of Egypt), page 35.  

“Metaphorologism of Water (a Praise)” de Gonçal Mayos, Capítulo 2 de Disasters  and Socio-environmental Conflicts: violence, damage and resistance de André Luiz Freitas Dias; Maria Fernanda Salcedo Repolês; Brunello Stancioli e Lucas Furiati de Oliveira (Organizadores), Rio de Janeiro, MC & G Editorial, Fundo PROAP do Ministério Público Estadual – MG, 2020, 272 pp. ISBN: 978-65-89369-08-0